Find the right neighborhood in Seattle and a good agent or realtor.

Many people want to buy a home that has easy access to the trails for hiking, biking, trail running and skiing. This is, after all, one of the reasons many of us live in the Pacific Northwest, and area that some of us also call Cascadia.

In the Seattle area, it’s actually pretty easy to figure out where to buy a home of you want to be near the trails. The thing to do is look at a map, and put a dot in North Bend and a dot where you work, and pick the spot between the two. That’s the spot for you!

You may want to skew this one way or the other, depending on your priorities. If you have to commute to work every day in a spot with nasty traffic (and let’s be real, that’s pretty much everywhere around here), then you might want to live closer to where you work. Maybe you want to go carless for your commute and walk to work.

Then some of you may want to be able to ride your mountain bike the trail head in places like Saint Edward State Park, Big Finn Hill, Soaring Eagle, Grand Ridge or Duthie Hill Park. Being able to ride your bike the trailhead is a dream of many of us. To do this you should pull up the trail guide from Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance at http://evergreenmtb.org/trails/ and find the area listed above that you’d like to live near. Paradise Valley Conservation Area is another option you should look at if you live near the Snohomish County line in Woodinville or Bothell.

Other than Paradise Valley and Big Finn/Saint Eddies all the good local riding areas are near I-90, so live with easy access to the freeway. A good person to use is a Realtor at http://jvpre.com/evergreen/ who can help you find a house and will actually donate some money to help build trails with Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance.

Seattle is a great city, bit not everyone is cut out for living in the big city, so you may want to look in the greater Seattle area. There is more traffic, schools aren’t as good, homes are smaller and older, and it’s just plain busier and nosier. Some people certainly prefer a smaller city, a town, or the peacefulness of suburban life.

We’ll talk about the main areas and neighborhoods, cities really, that you may want to live in outside of Seattle, but still within the main metro area. For this post we’ll focus on the cities along I-90, but you can always go further north or south into the cheaper working class neighborhoods if you want more space or can’t afford the main metro area.

Mercer Island

This is an upscale neighborhood of exclusive homes. It is very suburban and quiet, and even a fixer-upper in the cheaper middle part of Island will start north of $600,000. The main reason to live here is exclusivity, safety, great schools, and an easy commute to either Bellevue or Seattle.

Bellevue

Bellevue is Seattle’s little brother. It is just now starting to become more urban and has an impressive skyline. But it’s a much smaller city than it looks as the downtown isn’t very residential and almost the entire city is low density. It’s like living in the suburbs, but you’re actually in the city. The main reason to live here is if you work here, the schools are quite good, and it’s very safe. Traffic is often worse than Seattle, so pick you location wisely based on your commute.

Issaquah

Issaquah has a very different feel, and it’s more of a small town combine with suburban areas than it is a city. If you’re looking for Issquah real estate, it’s a good value, and has great trails due to Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance. The Olde Town is quaint, but there’s not much housing there. Cougar Mountain and Squak Mountain are 1960′s and 1970′s neighborhoods on dark, wooded hillsides, and the Issaquah Plateau is a newer area with the planned community Issaquah Highlands.

Take West Seattle for example. We call the area West Seattle, but no one calls it just one neighborhood since there’s 100,000 people and very different areas. Alki and Delridge couldn’t be more different, and the Alaska Junction and Admiral are even different still. Break it down further and there’s Genessee Hill, Morgan Junction, Lincoln Park, and the list goes on.

Ballard is similar to this. There’s Ballard, but it’s a big area. Do you live in Olde Towne Ballard, Sunset Hill, Crown Hill, Loyal Heights, Shilshole? They’re all different, though probably not as much as West Seattle.

The Central Area is even more of an example. You’ve got the CD, Madrona, Leschi, Mt. Baker, the sketchy area around 23rd and Cherry. In this area you can go from housing projects with crime and travel literally just five blocks and be into exclusive million dollar plus homes.

This is what makes Seattle so great! The video below is a Youtube tour of Seattle neighborhoods.